Sleepless and Spiritual

So called “Fake News” is in the headlines of the real stuff for a change, and there is a good reason for it. Baseless claims are being repeated on the internet over and over due to the way people resource their own blogs and social media. Stories with gut punching twists in them always do well, and in the realms of above the table fiction, all is well. But, the lines have been crossed with media journalists reaching for their targets with made up information. Finding the right ingredients to make a story worth sharing is tough, fuelling the emotive power of the reader into responding in any way at all is something we all think about. Telling lies, or relying on them in order to meet that all important care rating that inspires a reaction is several steps over that all important golden line.

Commonly known as black hat tactics in marketing, or journalism, this leaves the reader deluded and susceptible to errors of judgement. It can quickly spiral out of control as each voice adds their own take on the false information given, and soon what was initially a hunch or a fantastical speculation will be a full event with several backstories that all point in different directions. Anyone who is suddenly submerged in this eventuality and is open to accept news as true will no doubt find good reason to accept all given.

Censoring and watering down of the facts according to known possibilities and truth must be something to be considered. When presented with an argument of many facts and emotional perspectives, getting to the bare bones of truth will require some kind of digging through the personal and getting to the actual. Leaving out guesswork and casual linking of unrelated events has to be part of the process when relating the real news.

Freedom of speech and freedom to speak our thoughts openly is very important, and it cannot be denied to anyone, but this leaves a difference between news and opinion. Now that the web is accessible to all and anyone with a bit of coding or web-design skill can produce a news website, it needs to be understood that in order to be news, the rules of social responsibility have to be understood. In this way the mistakes of repeating falsities will be less likely and there will be methods of uncovering them in the production process.

Everything seems fine until someone gets hurt, and the article in the NY times today about a Pizzeria falsely accused of holding a child trafficking ring and then received several threats due to the spreading of the false story really tells the tale. Businesses, lives, and reputations are all in the balance, and when something surfaces like this, it can take a long time to set the record straight. The silver lining perhaps is that when the books tell the truth, the story becomes an advert rather than a libellous smear.

Within human progress, the efforts of one individual tend to count as steps on a larger ladder which is made up of the efforts of many. Often still, the steps can quite easily be laid independently from the other individuals, and only through time and the spreading of ideas do the pieces get placed together.

I have been watching a BBC Documentary on Youtube about the discovery of the Atom. Beginning with the tragic demise of the vilified Boltzmann, the story goes on to explain why he was in fact correct about his theories, and proven so before he committed suicide by none other than Einstein. Working in a separate project, the young physicist discovered the reasons for Brownian motion, in which pollen grains dance on the surface of water. Einstein was able to show that the kinetic energy of the individual atoms within the water were resulting in the microscopic movements of the tiny pollen grains.

The same principle can be seen in society, in which ideas are pushed one way and another by the perspectives of the individual people who hold them. This social Brownian motion occurred at this time with the development of atomic theory as steam power was becoming a huge driving force in not only trains but for the general progress of society. Military, industry, and transport were all making use of this then new technology. Finding the rules that define the way it behaves was paramount for understanding the engineering required to harness the maximum potential of it.

After the apparent discovery of the atom by Einstein, it took a few years for the scientific community to adopt the ideas as the standard. Many critics believed that the essence of material was infinite, and could be divided indefinitely. This spurred many new discoveries about what the atoms consist of, and how they behave in various forms. Being able to think about the world in new ways in order to solve the challenges of scientific discovery is how many pioneering thinkers have predicted and then proven the way things work. The logical steps to discovery are taken by different thinkers at different times, and once the whole perspective is formed, the defining points can be made.

Society is always evolving, and the way we choose to look at the world is always up for speculative critique. Listening to others who have identified truths in their own way and then putting them into action with processes known in other ways, results in deeper and greater understanding. This can be worked into any route of progress, science is not exclusive to this method of growth. Anything that is undertaken by people is up for evolution, and this is driven by the thoughts, ideas, and goals of those who partake at the time.

I recommend you watch the documentary for yourself, to see what I mean. I have embedded it into this post.

​Having been a student, carer, and full time employee of myself, it is time for me to step back for a short while and reshape my candles, apply new wax, wicks, and generally connect with myself once more. As an artist, writer, poet etc, it's not like I make a salary, and so I wont be checking for the cheap flights for a quick getaway, nor will I be driving off somewhere for a while, no, for me, I will be having a holiday from myself. How do I do this? It is a matter of perspectives. My home, my community, and my life in general is an infinite realm of possibility. Having been working hard on several of these possibilities which I was able to pin point from the great expanse before me, now is the right time to pull a few of those pins out and let the strings hang loose.

It's been really fruitful for me to have gone on my personal journey, I have learned a lot about the world, myself, and the people around me. It's like I am coming out of an intensive education set by myself, geared to find a real direction in life that I can enjoy, be proud of, and hopefully enrich as I go. I went as far as I could, admired the view, and then decided to turn around and go home. Nothing has changed, and that's perhaps the strangest thing. Not even I have changed that much, I'm just a bit wiser to self and the world.

It is time to find pleasure in paper books, paint brushes and colour, and the odd outing to somewhere nice with the best people I can find at the time. There's a lot of them around so all of this stuff wont be too much to handle.

Finally, I want to mention poetry. It's been while since I released a book, and there is good reason for this. I don't want to bombard everyone with poetry books for a start, but more poignantly, I wanted to wait until I felt able to do something that actually had value, aesthetically and artistically. Many of my poetry anthologies are simply made, and are comprised of the works done by myself from the time I released the last one until the time I released that one. This is good, and how anthologies are made, however, unless there has been a significant progression of feeling within that time, then the book will not reflect it.

This past year has seen me work myself into a state of needed a significant time away from most things intense, and it led me to look back. I've been promoting Blurb as part of my work, as self publishing is something I really care about as an empowering and progressive tool for society. But I'd not used them before. I saw my chance. Not really a holiday activity, but something I enjoy all the same, I decided to make a go of using their site and software to do a mock run of a future book. I was impressed. It makes everything really simple for the author, provided a downloadable program that does all the functions required, and allowed me to have a look at making something real next time. An injection of confidence perhaps, basically I just want to say that it wont be long until I feel able to provide something poetic and artistic that you will all want a copy of.

​During the past two years, in my career as a social media content provider, I have acquired a very large following. Large in terms of numbers for my experience and skill, as I am totally aware that many people and organisations have many more connections than I do, a combination of over ten thousand is a lot for a poet and small time freelance writer. The people are spread out over various platforms, of which I am growing all the time.

Something about trees that I have noticed is that they have trunks. When a tree grows in the wild, the lower shoots are prone to being eaten, which is why a trunk forms over time. Now, more than likely trees are managed by their owners or caretakers, in order to develop healthy trunks when mature. I myself have been involved in the work of the park rangers, and we would plant baby trees as the job. In preparation, we'd snip around the leading branch in order to encourage a good strong mother branch system.

It perhaps is a little bit like forced intervention, but it was an order, m'am. However, my public profile had become a hub for people all over the world. With regular commenting taking place from every populated continent, I began to feel an element of risk that was unacceptable. But, I also had in my mind the notion that I was safe, and this is a unique opportunity to really get to know this world I live in without leaving my home.

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